I will explain What is the Data and Information and Data Volumes in this article.

Data and Information

The Data and Information words are known to be the same by most people, but they are not the same.

The raw and unorganized facts that are noteworthy but have not gained any meaning are called Data.

Informationis called processed, organized, structured data.

Data is the raw material of the database. The information that plays a very important role in the decision-making processes of the institutions using the database is formed as a result of correct, relevant and timely processing of the data. Therefore, most of the databases are composed of data and the data obtained from these databases are also kept in the Databases.

In the 1970s, Gigabyte-sized data was probably a dream, but today, Terabyte, even Petabyte Databases, is normal and exist for almost every institution.

In the future, it will now be petabyte (1024 terabyte), exabyte, zettabyte and maybe yottabyte (2^80).

Data Volumes

Volume of data in a single file or file system can be described by a unit called a byte.

Following table is explaining data volume units by credit Roy Williams, Center for Advanced Computing Research at the California Insitute of Technology.

Unit

Value

Definition, Example

Bit

1

A binary decision

Byte

8 bits

A character

Kilobytes (KB)

1024 bytes

A paragraph of a text document

Megabytes (MB)

1024 Kilobytes

A small novel

Gigabytes (GB)

1024 Megabytes

A Small movie

Terabytes (TB)

1024 Gigabytes

all the X-rays in a large hospital

Petabytes (PB)

1024 Terabytes

half the contents of all US academic research libraries

Exabytes (EB)

1024 Petabytes

about one fifth of the words people have ever spoken

Zettabytes (ZB)

1024 Exabytes

as much information as there are grains of sand on all the world’s beaches